CAD designing with Blender?

[Hellbringer616]

My dad is an Engineer who (sadly) has been out of the work force for a while. And he wants to brush up on his CAD skills with some more modern tools (for any Engineers out there, the most recent program he used was IdeaZ and Catia 3)

Was just curious is Blender could be basically used as a CAD application? Or if there was a suitable alternative? As these programs are a few thousand dollars we don't have haha.

Any blender savvy folks who don't know what i mean, In CAD programs you get set a physical mass to an object, as well as type of material. And constraints (for example. make a hole thats roughly 80cm and you tell it to make it exactly 80cm and it makes it 80cm)

So any help on this subject would be awesome

 

[sithlord48]

perhaps maybe free cad would be more helpful.

 

[pyrozen]

I work in the aerospace industry and while blender is a good tool for learning the basic of 3d modeling, it would be a poor choice as a solid 3d modeler. It also lacks the dimension-ing aspects of any CAD package such as blueprinting. Simply put, blender is a great tool for prototyping and making things that otherwise will never touch the real world. Trying to produce a viable product in these studios would be at best difficult. If he is looking to brush up on his skills I would recommend trying to get a student license for AutoCAD(or desk). Typically, you only need to know someone in ANY school to apply for one and they simply give it to you. The only downside is that models created on a student license cannot be manipulated on another machine, but since he only wants to practice this shouldn't matter.

The packages we use at work are Siemens NX and Dassult Systems CATIA. Both of these programs run off of floating licenses that cost $10,000+ per seat! If he's really desparate, call up to your local community college and see if they offer any CAD design classes. These are typically only $300 or so for a semester, and it will get him the student status he needs to obtain a student license.

Tell him good luck for me!

 

[Hellbringer616]

@SithLord: I forwarded him FreeCAD and he said he'd check it out.

@Pyrozen: Blender won't work then, because not only does he want to practice, he intends on using it to draft and build a few things (desks, tables, doors, ect Whatever he feels like i'm guessing)

He did want me to ask how CATIA has changed over the years (if you happen to have used older versions) as he still remembers how to do everything on the version he used. But he is concerned that the new one is a lot different (MS Office 03 to 07 like different)

He also said thanks for the good luck

 

[pyrozen]

I am fairly new in the industry with CATIA v5R19 being the only version I have spent any time with. Our shop also primarily models in Unigraphics(NX) so I may not be the best judge of what has changed or which is easier.  Talking with the folks who have been around for a while, CATIA has remained pretty consistent over the years in terms of functionality/usability. I think the only thing he may miss is the console which allows you to directly interface with the models. Everything is GUI driven at this point, so if he became accustomed to the console it may take a bit to rediscover where functions have been moved or combined with others. Fortunately, the help files are exhaustive, and their is also a quick search function which allows you to directly enter the name of what you want to do and it brings back operations that can accomplish it.

That being said, if he worked with CATIA for awhile, I wouldn't see much trouble in getting back into it. it is certainly easier than switching to another package entirely such as Unigraphics(NX) or autoDesk.


I should also mention with the amount of defense contracts going through, he may want to look into the aerospace/defense area for CAD work. Alot of shops are desperate for even part time help as long as they've got the chops. I live in the Midwest and competent modelers and machine programmers are getting a premium right now.

 

[Timu Sumisu]

Check various relevant job postings and what proficiencies they're looking for, and work with those tools, either student liscences or whatever way he can get access to him. Usually its not good enough to have 'similar-ish' tools, they want you to know the particular software they're going to use as is.